Conscious Defiance
March 12, 2010 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I’ve been defiant and it got me into trouble with whoever had the authority over that particular domain at that particular time. It created a contradiction in me because defiance made me feel alive, powerful and real. But the cost was very high so I feared it at the same time.
Its different now that I’m aware of it, and can define it as: Discernment Discipline + Natural Aggression = Conscious Defiance. I still get in trouble and although I don’t like it, I can be present with the resistance I meet.
My favorite conscious defiance metaphor is “Stick it to the man.” from the great movie School of Rock with crazy-defiant Jack Black.
But how do you stick it to the man in the midst of The Big Shift, Great Recession, The Reset, or whatever they call the massive changes we’re in. Pretty much everyone and everything looks like and acts like “the man”?
I think Eckhart Tolle’s Present Moment Reminder helps answer that:
“Change is absolutely necessary in this world, and the dissolution of many of the ego-based structures is necessary for humanity to survive. What’s happening isn’t ‘dreadfully bad.’ It needs to happen; the intelligence behind phenomena is doing it, so it’s a good thing.”
In other words, align with evolution, defy the temptation to do anything less and leave the rest to the field.
Embodied Resentment
December 1, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Graphic credit: ©2008-2009 ~smoweeks via DeviantArt
When I work with people to help them better respond to change, I find there’s zero tolerance or willingness to examine old, embodied resentments and the problems they cause. I’ve learned to distinguish these from the usual, garden-variety resentments, the lingering, angry thoughts and feelings about people or unwanted experiences that provoke, harm or result in suffering. Resentful thought forms that impede personal, professional and organizational growth and development, can be resolved when people are willing to separate and examine facts, thinking and feelings.
Embodied resentments are older, even ancient and always subconscious. They seem to come out of nowhere. You can just be driving along in the sunshine and listening to your favorite music and suddenly you realize that you’ve been fixated for an hour on some old grudge that you were sure you were finished with long ago. You find yourself in a moody funk darkened by obsessive negative thinking, anxiety and a sense of hopelessness. We all know what it feels like to be in the “grip” of the black heart and what it feels like to be around others in its grasp. Its not hard to envision the impact on organizational culture when embodied, contagious resentments surface and get fueled by the rumor and gossip mill.
The desire, of course, is to stop or at least alleviate the accompanying suffering. The challenge is knowing how to work with our own and others’ resentments that are deeply hidden from awareness. When the memories and beliefs are blocked from your mind yet embodied in your cells, how can you examine what you don’t know you know? We’re taught about the pitfalls of the default responses like resistance, denial, distraction, avoidance, numbing and pretense. Those pitfalls include prolonging and intensifying the suffering and contaminating others by projecting it onto, and acting it out against, people you live or work with.
A better response is a friendly curiosity about embodied resentment: where does it come from, when does it show up and what does it want of us? It may be showing up on an anniversary or holiday, or at a place we’ve been before, or in a challenging circumstance similar to a past one we’ve already experienced. Like a disturbing dream, disturbing resentment can be a pointer to something we need to learn to keep moving forward and evolving; or it can be a lead to help us solve a seemingly intractable problem or help us make a seemingly impossible personal or business decision.
It may seem like a stretch that the grip of the black heart and its attendant misery and suffering is a good thing. If so, it may be valuable to at least be willing to accept that its a helluva effective way to stop us and get our attention. What we do with it is our choice.
Merchandising Your Professional Service Practice
August 19, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I read Creating You & Company in 1999 when I was planning to leave my last real job and start my professional service firm as a solopreneur. 
It was a great influence because it validated my sense that “having a job” was a worn out concept, signally that huge, disruptive shifts would take place in the world of work. It also supported my business model idea which was to offer services as products, which I call programs.
Recently, its occurred to me that professional service “products” need merchandising just like any other product. I know quite a bit about merchandising because I work part-time doing garden center merchandising as the liaison between the grower and the big-box stores.
Three fundamental merchandising concepts in garden center merchandising can be effectively applied to professional services:
Display – One of the first things I do when I take on a new store is to scan what product is out front in the main aisles and benches, and to look at what product is in the lot and in the back of the carts. Typically, there’s old stale product where people are shopping and fresh new product languishing where nobody can see it. Are you displaying your best solutions, ideas and content where your clients are are looking and shopping?
Consolidation – In the garden centers, I’m continually maximizing shelf space while at the same time grouping products for maximum appeal. The more I do it, the greater the capacity I develop for quickly scoping out very large areas, visualizing the end result, and figuring out the most efficient way to get that result. What are your opportunities to continually consolidate and group together your solutions, ideas and content so they “pop” when your clients are looking and shopping?
Culling – I’m surprised how difficult it is for people to get rid of product that’s no good. I think its mainly because they can’t make culling decisions by putting themselves in the customers’ shoes and asking themselves: “will I buy this?” Its a no excuses point of view. Prolific author Stephen King is a great culler and strongly advises that aspiring writers pay strict attention to culling:
..kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings. – Stephen King
Are you hanging on to boring or outdated solutions, ideas and content that are spoiling the overall appeal, and are holding back the growth and momentum of your professional service practice?
If these fundamental merchandising concepts make sense, and the questions hold some truth for you, this may be a good time to put aside the latest and greatest tools and technologies and merchandise your professional services. Inspiration is always available at your local garden center. If you need a good system, I love WordPress.
The Art of Refusal
July 10, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If you feel defeated because you can’t get or be what you want, refuse to have or be anything less.
If you’re stressed out and angry over loss or change, refuse to make others and the space around you stressed out and angry.
If you’re in a crisis and fearful, refuse to merge with it.
If you can’t handle it anymore, refuse to carry the burden and release it to someone, or something else.
If you’re burning with resentment, refuse to judge anyone or anything.
If you’re feeling snarky and cruel about someone, refuse to repeat what you’re thinking.
If you’re in the grip of addiction or compulsion, refuse to be unkind to yourself.
If you’re feeling isolated and unwanted, smile and greet everyone warmly.
The more you practice the art of refusal, the more you accept the responsibility for creating both the good and bad in your life in exactly the same way. At that point, what you’ll feel most is grateful.
Friction Free
June 9, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
An underlying technology of the machine tool industry I was involved with was tribology, concerned with friction, lubrication and wear. Round and cylindrical parts last longer when the hardness and smoothness is improved and continually lubricated. The need for tribology grew when tolerance for friction decreased as engines became smaller (example: compact cars) and applications became more critical (example: artificial hip joints).
Without tribology applications, anything from grit to human antibodies will abrade, erode and eventually destroy surface finish.
Its a good metaphor for how to respond to the changes and uncertainty resulting from an increasingly smaller and connected globe, lack of tolerance for bad systems and replacement of worn-out structures.
Worry, doubt, ego, hubris and what Julia Cameron beautifully describes as giving in to “the temptation of despair” will just as quickly erode individual and collective human potential as a speck of dirt will destroy a bearing. Self-aware people and organizations are vigilant about thinking, assumptions and expectations. The result is a mirror-finish belief system or culture that deflects what’s not wanted and functions smoothly, regardless of circumstances.
Relationships, networks and social capital provide the lubricant.
The Cast Net
March 13, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I spent several autumns fishing in Menemsha on Martha’s Vineyard.
I found myself thinking today about how I loved watching really experienced fishermen cast net for Menhaden, a prized bait fish that sometimes swam in schools close to shore and the jetty. I admired their skill, grace and timing and the cast net scenes had a fascinating archetype quality.
Today, its my change metaphor. Typically we identify with the caster. We learn the skills, get the tools, make a plan, set the goal, identify the target, try again and again, and eventually succeed and get the fulfillment we expect, or we give up and try something else.
But circumstances are raising awareness that our identification with the caster’s control is illusory. We feel more like the cast: flung out and spinning in mid-air.
Often, the response to that insecure feeling is to give away our power to the caster – the shifting external reality, those difficult experiences and circumstances, the things that we don’t want to be happening to us. The caster is the cause and us in free-fall the effect.
We can change this by shifting our reality: life, always on our side, is the caster and we are the cast. We entrust the ways, means and timing to life – the divine. Instead of free-fall and fear, we’re suspended, yet prepared and poised to claim the best probable outcome at the right place and time.
Leading with Presence when Nothing is Certain
January 23, 2009 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Leadership programs have helped executives be empathetic to employees facing organizational change. Soft skills help change leaders give employees the time and space to wander around in a jungle of uncertainty until they’re ready to accept new models, systems and structures.
That uncertainty is now magnified as the world’s financial, economic and business foundations have shifted beneath us. Uncertainty is no longer a place on the path to something different. It is the path.
For today’s leaders – of organizations, teams, start-ups and even solo professional and creative firms (self-leadership) – its all the more important to increase self-awareness and presence in order to hold the space for events to unfold, and for people to adapt.
Holding space, or presence leadership might sound counter-intuitive to habitual change responses that attempt to reduce confusion. Those typically include more doing, telling, reacting, trying to “make things happen” through force of will, jumping to conclusions about the future and making assumptions about the past.
But confusion results when people believe they don’t know something they should know, or need to know. Confusion will be reduced or eliminated only when that belief is replaced by unconditional acceptance of uncertainty.
Presence leaders will communicate and model how this acceptance is a pivotal point of power (not weakness). In doing so, they naturally influence people in their organization to see themselves as cause, not effect, and to be poised for the best, not resigned to the worst.
The jungle metaphor transforms to a still mysterious, but friendlier, supportive and more orderly place where people can wander, but not be lost.
Alignment Pricing Your Professional Services – Its a Conversation, not a Proposal
December 9, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
I’m playing around with my business right now. Its one of the great things about being an independent and an entrepreneur. You can try things.
This week an impulse to do something innovative with my fees just took hold. Granted, I’m interested in shifts to buyer power and business models like VRM that have sprung forth from that shift. But it just felt really important to take action as long as what I did passed my basic criteria that it be integral, that is:
- good for me and my business
- good for my clients
- good for my community
- some kind of greater good
I just feel so strongly that a lot of people need my help and I want to make it easier for them to get it and for me to give it. Its as simple as that; in fact it always has been but our resistance gets in the way of what’s easy and simple and creative.
Since the dawn of professional services we’ve made setting fees difficult and complex because we’re attached to and identified with a lot of beliefs and assumptions about them and the clients who pay them. I’ve decided to not believe, assume or expect that anymore. As a result of that shift, I’ve published “suggested fees” for my programs and will encourage anyone who has concerns or issues with the fees to converse simply and openly and honestly with me to align our:
- intentions
- readiness
- perceptions of value
- desires
In so many ways, personal, professional and social, we’re starting things over and we’re in it together. That’s why I want aligned partnerships, based on trust and focused on new direction and positive change. So I’ve decided to be that partner and give the fees space. They’ll find their natural level and I’ll have more time to play, dream and innovate.
Differentiate Your Professional Service Practice
December 4, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Photo credit: Wessex Archaeology's photostream (coastal and marine set) on Flickr
I get asked over and over by some people about what kind of coaching and consulting I do. They seem to have a preconceived notion, or perception of it and then attempt to reconcile my explanation to somehow fit their worldview. Sometimes I can’t figure out if they’re curious and trying and wanting to understand, or just not listening.
But now I’m realizing that people are pulled out of their comfort level when they’re in the depths, and the depths is my space.
I work with people at the level of often hidden assumptions, expectations and beliefs. In organizations, its collections of those – the culture. I use metaphysical metaphors to support the change facilitation process. I shouldn’t be surprised that people want to stick their toe in the water many times before they risk getting a touch of the bends.
I’m blogging this because I’m getting a sense that there’s a growing desire, or movement, or response to series of crises, to go deeper: in life, business and self-awareness. I think its a great sign that people and businesses are showing willingness and readiness to move beyond the surface of their experience, and with a leap in faith, take the plunge into what’s deep and unknown…that with which we identify but which contradicts what we want and where we want to go.
I don’t believe that “going deep” is only within the realm of professionals who focus on “people” issues. Accountants, consultants, health professionals, lawyers, technology professionals, etc, can practice recognizing opportunities to serve clients at a deeper level. It starts with allowing more space for conversation and sharing, being present without an agenda, and being willing to think differently about everything we and our clients think we know.
Uncertainty is the new reality for our clients. We can help them make it their pivot point of power from which they can create and direct their change and growth, if we dare to be different.
Business and Social Media: A Non-linear Process
November 16, 2008 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Leave a Comment
Social Media:Community Snapshot
Social media will increasingly become more important to businesses that must find new ways to gain influence and increase attention share in peer-to-peer (friends) networks.
However, the strategies being developed to help companies accomplish this are often loosely based on a traditional sales and marketing funnel analogy, identifying community members as:
- visitors
- prospects
- leads
- opportunities
- customers
The funnel goal is to focus efforts on the people who are most likely to be influenced to take action and move them through the funnel.
This is an effective social network model but is based on assumptions that are not applicable for many businesses. The graphic simply illustrates a non-linear social community model as a connected group of people, including a tiny percentage who talk and a very large percentage who listen only, and who all have latent needs. Often, that’s it!
In this model, people (peers) who listen only to other people (peers and brand) may be just as likely to be influenced as the small percentage of people (peers) who talk. And there’s no way of knowing what the brand (people) can do to facilitate that. It requires experiential learning.
Because many communities look and act like this, its critical that business social media strategies differentiate assumptions from myths and not base their quest for quantitative metrics and ROI on those myths. Its harder to do that than it sounds because we individually and collectively (culture) identify with what’s worked in the past. Its what we “know”.
But success could mean testing many assumptions about the 95% of community members who listen only, and learning how to earn their attention and better understand them. Compared to traditional marketing methods, its a less clear, test and learn approach, dependent more on time than money. But that should not mean a casual or haphazard, half-hearted approach to social media.
Regardless of how tentative you feel about it, or how small you start, take it seriously. This is the future, and whatever the size of your business, an important decision you’ll make and change that you’ll lead.
-
Latest Articles
-
Latest Twitter
- Gronkowski - that was sick! #patriots #fb 1 week ago
- More updates...
RedShift Change Model
DRIVE
Special Topic Pages
Don't Miss a Thing - Free Updates by Email!
RedShift Blog Archives
Connect and Share
-
Where's the zorba?
-
Solo Professional Service Firms (PSF)
-
Change Leadership
-
Industry
-
VRM (Vendor Relationship Management)
-
WordPress
-
Creativity
- How Dare You!
- Continual Link Making
- Merchandising Your Professional Service Practice
- Space
- You Don’t Need to Botox Your Blog
Why No Comments
The RedShift Web Site Pages and the corresponding Blog: Creating Natural Influence, do not enable comments. I'm more comfortable getting feedback on social sites than here, where the work is so close to who I am, where I've been and where I'm going. If you have a comment or question, or would like to suggest a topic for an upcoming blog article, please contact me. Thank you.
